PON mobile access network without Mobile IP FA switchover

We introduce a PON (passive optical network) mobile access network as a candidate to offer continuous multimedia IP communications to fast moving terminals in a microcellular environment. As an alternative to IP micro-mobility protocols, we propose a PON access network with the foreign agent (FA) distributed over all access points connected to the same fiber. All ONU (optical network units) associated with the same FA are given the same IP address, and mobility inside the area of a single fiber is transparent to the IP layer. Our architecture thus supports soft handover for IP transmissions on the downlink inside each fiber, at the same time as the home agent (HA) update frequency is reduced. Simulations showed that at 70 km/h in a 100 m microcellular network with PON clusters of 30 cells, HA update occurs every 25 seconds, compared to every five seconds if a unique FA is located at each access point.